I was born and raised a farm girl in rural Minnesota where I met and married the adoration of my lifetime! Our family currently lives in a rural community in Iowa where we frequently trade stories with the family \x34back home\x34 of the likeness
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I was born and raised a farm girl in rural Minnesota where I met and married the adoration of my lifetime! Our family currently lives in a rural community in Iowa where we frequently trade stories with the family \x34back home\x34 of the likeness and differences of the slower life from one state to the next. My husband and I own our own business where we provide for our three growing daughters who are the light of our world. Writing has always been an outlet for me, starting a diary as young as 4th grade and continuing for each of my daughters currently. Writing clears my mind and my heart of things that I would rather say but don't (due to my impeccable manners) or did say and wished I hadn't (sometimes those manners fail). I am clearly outspoken and am working on being filled with grace and compassion. In my spare time my family and I enjoy reading, biking and cooking. We do NOT enjoy cold snowy weather.

Today is sunny but cool and windy. Almost Minnesota windy. So windy, in fact, that we were able to take a kite out to a vacant lot behind us and fly it for 30 minutes! We live in the middle of our tiny lovely town. There are buildings and trees all around, which typically make flying a kite unusually hard. The wind can get to whipping around the lot in every direction sending your kite straight into the ground. Today, that was not the case.
It took some doing, getting our three lovlies out to fly the kite. They remember the Kite Disaster of 2012 when they were mere babes of 7, 4, and 2. It started out as a lovely, but cool and windy, Spring day with Dad in 2012. Mom was gone to lunch with girlfriends so Dad was going to make it a day to remember. He packed the girls into the van and headed across town to our local school, set up high on a hill with no other trees or buildings around. He unpacked the girls, explained the science of kite flying and then began the adventure.
All was well until clouds started rolling in, faster and faster. When clouds roll in and the wind picks up, generally you leave. Not my husband. I think he took it as a personal challenge from the weather to continue flying the kite. He was able to hold off the strong gusts for about 10 minutes, then the kite caught a particularly strong upwind and the string broke. Up, up and away went the kite, up so high he didn't think that it would return to the ground in our particular county. When he turned around to explain to the girls the situation, he found them huddled in a pile bawling. Not just crying, but bawling so that they weren't making any sound. At first he was alarmed but when they finally sputtered out that they missed the kite, he did the worst thing a Dad could do. He dismissed it. Told them that it was cheap ("3 for $1") and he would get another one. Well, they indeed did not want ANOTHER one, they wanted THAT one. He started to run, as fast as he could go on a bum knee and 35 years of age dragging him down. Then he realized that it was silly, it cost him $.33! So, he tried to just go back and explain that at home there were two others. Again, the bawling picked up in intensity to where it was a full-on roar, and unbelievably embarrassing moment in time where Dad didn't know why they were acting this way or what to do about it. So, Dad did what he does best. He piled them into the car, all the while trying to explain costs, supply and demand, economics in general and what $.33 looks like in change. It didn't help, it made things worse. Mom received a text while dining out. The words said, "Kite blew away. Girls freaking out. Now what?" I didn't text back. That is the story of my life with girls! "Dad is strong and healthy and smart, he will figure it out", I mused.

They never forgot. Brought it up in conversations often throughout the past 12 months.

Blink back to today, where we decided to give it another go...SUCCESS! The kite is safely back in our garage where we can use it again for another windy Spring/Summer day!